Click to Return
Katana
A katana surrendered to a Canadian POW from the battle of Hong Kong.
A sword with a very interesting Canadian History.
This is a very interesting old sword that I recently acquired from the friend of a Canadian Soldier who fought the Japanese in Hong Kong. The soldier along with about 1975 other Canadian solders were in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded. They fought from Dec 8, 1941 until December 25th 1941 when they were forced to surrender. The little known battle is a very important part of Canadian military history. After the Canadian soldiers were captured most of them were sent to Japan and used as slave laborers, many died at the hands of some very ruthless Japanese commanders and soldiers. Many prisoners died of malnourishment and abuse by the Japanese soldiers and Commanders, the day they were captured their hands were bound with barbed wire and their abuse didn't stop until the war ended.
The soldier who owned it was named Duncan Whitman, he was from Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. From what I can ascertain he and a friend from Cornwall enlisted in or around 1939, they were sent to the Winnipeg Rifles Regiment and were subsequently mobilized to Hong Kong to defend the British outpost located there. After the surrender he was shipped to Japan and forced into hard labour until the war ended.
When Mr Whitman returned home to Cornwall in 1946 he was employed by CNR (Canadian National Railway) as a book keeper, he brought the sword home from the camp. He sold the sword a few short years later to a friend, the person whom I acquired the sword from. His earliest recollection of the sword when he purchased it in the early 1950's was "This sounds weird, but when I took the sword out of the scabbard it smelled like guts, I had to clean it many times to get rid of the smell."
The cutting edge is is about 26.5 inches long, the military mounts are in very good condition. The sword has been shortened at least two times, it probably had a cutting edge of 32 or more inches. The kissaki is the large type (O-kissaki), the horimono is of a dragon wrapped around a ken and on the other side there are bonji. Another interesting fact is that this sword has seen battle prior to the second world war as indicated by 3 deep battle scars on the back edge of the sword (mune), these are only caused by another sword strike. This may be a Heianjo sword made around the 1540's, more research will be done on this. This sword was not the typical sword brought home by a veteran, it was not abused and played with, it was simply taken from an officer and brought home where is was put away and rarely looked at.
The engraving on the reverse of the blade is kanji. They are 4 kanji and lotus flower (seat of Buddha) The kanji read “Namu Hachiman” (Na-Mu-Hachi-Man). Namu is a word to celebrate Buddha, Hachiman is short for Hachiman-daibosatsu, the Japanese god who protects samurai.
NEW PRICE $2,500.00 was $4500.00!!!!!! A very good deal! CDN.
